I have read quite a few posts regarding the relative merits of powergaming and min maxing, but I was wondering if anyone has purposefully played a character that is extremely average in every regarding?
Maybe a fighter that wanted to sacrifice overkill for a few extra skills, and ability to talk to NPCs without them immediately hating.
Or a wizard who was happy not hitting the heddy heights of level 7 spells if he could have a few extra hit points and the ability to carry more than a spare towel.
Or maybe a priest who wanted to know more than the two skills.
And I'm not particularly talking about people who roll stats straight out, I'm talking about points buying were they have actively chosen a character that underwhelms in all areas.
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There's a huge gulf between min-maxed and doomed to mediocrity. Consider this 15 PB array of stats:
S16 D12 C12 I13 W8 Ch10 (before racial adjustments)
I played this set as a fighter all the way through Carrion Crown - and the GM thought I was overpowered. Several of my choices here go against accepted build strategies - a wisdom penalty on a fighter; I took Int 13 just for Combat Expertise and did not even take Improved maneuver feats. But this character did just fine. Died once to a nat 1 on a Fort SoD spell.
So you can give your wizard physical scores(one of my friends once made a high-Str wizard who "went to wizard school on a sports scholarship"), you can give a cleric a decent Int, all without actually crippling your character - even with just 15 points.
I haven't played 10 PB yet so I'm not sure how diverse you can make those characters, but I'd bet it's better than most people think.
You should be able to have a character who is really, really good at one thing and still quite good at another two or three.
I've got a 5th level fighter in the Iron Gods adventure path. His primary attack is two-handing a falcata (+11 to-hit, 1d8+16 damage 19-20/x3) and has a respectable +10 disable Device, +13 perception, +8 Craft (mechanical), +8 Knowledge (engineering), and +6 for diplomacy. I spent a few of my feats to get those skills and it is a rather viable character.
He's fine with the "face" stuff, has some skill-monkey stuff, and still smashes about as well as the party's barbarian.
My PFS CORE PC is this.
Average Human Fighter. Average stats, average weapons, average background, average goals, average personality.
STR 12, DEX 10, CON 10, INT 10, WIS 10, CHA 10, 15.5hp at second level, and swings a longsword because that's about as average a weapon as I can think of.
Well, that's an average human who's gone into fighting. (Although I think the 'standard' place for the +2 on a human is Con, so rearrange as desired.)
Still, as mentioned earlier, you don't have to eke out every 0.5 points of damage from your character if you don't want to. In a different game I was in (more modern), we had a driver/wheelman type who put about everything into Dex, while our main soldier-type went 14/14/14/12/12/12. Their class and skill setups helped with things, although oddly they also ended up backing each other up a lot for both fighting and driving.
I like to play Bard.